[…]The information mentioned in the article are some of the greatest available […]……

Fanatastic post! Makes me change my embargo on commenting…

Lets just say that your posts mke me desire to comment, something which i typically never do….

First, here’s a link to the article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124588837560750781.html

My response:
Objecting to this is a bit like the car companies (successfully) objecting to raising mileage standards from the late 70’s till just this year. Everyone is arguing that they should be allowed to make whatever idiotic long term decisions on energy they want, so as to maximize today’s profits and to hell with our future. You can see where this got the car companies. Don’t you think that if they had been mandated to raise mileage standards a little bit every year from the last increase (which I think was around 1979) to today that they’d be in better competitive shape now than they are?

It’s the same thing with energy. As we have past peak oil, energy prices are BOUND to increase sharply every time demand recovers enough to bang up against the gradually lowering supply ceiling. Now we can let industry continue to take the short term maximize-my-yearly-bonus viewpoint they currently have, just as we let the car companies enjoy their lack of vision, with similar predicted consequences for the economy as a whole – a massive downturn as energy costs drive hyper inflation for everyone. Or we can introduce some vision. If this bill causes a modest amount of conservation and/or investment in on site alternative energy – put up a windmill or solar collector and bang, you not only have reduced your energy costs but have credits to trade in the bargain – it will benefit everyone. The only way this does not make sense from an economic perspective is if we assume that conventional energy resources are magically infinite.

Failing to get everyone to do a bit of conservation or invest in alternatives just means the next price spike will be a huge killer. We will ALL feel that – at the pump, buying groceries, manufactured goods, heating our houses, electricity costs, you name it.

Whatever you think of global warming, even if you believe (unlike 99% of scientists) that it is a hoax – this is still a very positive bill for our economic future. Embrace it! Life on earth is changing, status quo simply won’t be possible, and the sooner we begin adapting the better for all of us.

Just as the economy is collapsing in great part because we are trying to spend much more than we earn, so our civilization - and our sustained population - will begin to collapse as the supply of energy becomes more and more constrained. Wealth, life, and energy are intimately interrelated. If we wish our children to have more than the annual budget of energy that we currently capture form the sun - which only fills a fraction of our energy needs - then we must assign a sizable portion of our wealth and energy resources to creating infrstructure that will capture more solar energy (in the form of harvesting the sun directly through PVC, solar hot water, and wind, wave and other forms, as well as geothermal which is the only viable long term source of non-solar energy).

However the truth is, we can’t replace all the energy we currently get from fossil fuels with renewable energy. We are starting too late; we simply will not commit the level of resources needed; there are too many of us. An enormous job needs to be done in conservation and retooling our lifestyles to begin living within a reasonable energy budget. I’m skeptical we can pull this off but we have to try.